This month marks the centennial birthday year of my mother Violet Lorraine Jackson Burnett (1924-2012).
That’s mom standing on the right in the Polaroid of us on our porch in the series of pictures that were taken by Terri’s parents at our home in Missouri in the spring of 1989.
Mom is 68 years old in this photo but looked at least twenty years younger relative to other people the same age of her generation.
We were still an active duty military family when she came to live with us after her retirement from a very successful 25-year career as an alcohol and drug abuse counselor.
This past Monday was my father-in-law Dave’s birthday and he would have been 91 years old.
Terri Anderson Burnett still greatly misses her father and I miss him too.
It has become our tradition to honor ancestors of our time.
We acknowledge and celebrate Dave’s birthday quietly in our home between the two of us.
Terri found this Polaroid photo of him while organizing and labeling the pictures within a box of her parents’ snapshots.
I first met Dave in 1980 when he and T’s mom Sintha came to Germany. They took the opportunity to tour Europe and visit us there before we transferred to the First US Army Band that was based out of Fort Meade in the Military District of Washington back then.
Dave passed in 2010 surrounded by his loving family after a courageous battle with cancer, at age 77. He attended Waite High School, married Sintha in 1954, and also served in the US Army.
When I met Dave, he was still working at the AMC/ Chrysler/ Jeep automotive manufacturing company in Toledo as a plant electrician. He ultimately worked there for 40 years, retiring in 1991.
Dave helped me select my first real home handyman tool box along with the tools that I needed to go in it.
Dave was a knowledgeable fan of the big bands and knew all of the major bandleaders as well as numerous others that I had never known existed.
He had a pristine collection of vinyl records by numerous of his favorites among these bands.
We would listen to music during our visits over the years. Vinyl and cassettes mostly at first.
And our last listening sessions were using the digital music service called Rhapsody, a precursor to Amazon, Apple Music and Spotify.
We still love and miss Dave tremendously but the pain of knowing he is not in Ohio with Sintha to go visit isn’t as searing as it was for so many years.
And it’s also comforting for us to know that they’re together again and this time for the ages.
Growing up during my early formative years in a United States Air Force 🇺🇸 family that traveled, I lived in at least five sibling homes in three different states and also overseas in France 🇫🇷 before I was 10 years old.
When my sibling family finally settled not far from my paternal hometown of the city of Olathe, in my maternal hometown of Paola, Kansas after my father’s military service, I was conditioned to moving and starting over.
Most military kids who have moved around and lived in different places are generally pretty resilient. The most resilient among them “grow where they are planted.”
Our own military service involved lots of moving too.
We’ve lived in our current city longer than we have lived anywhere including our paternal hometowns where we grew up with our respective sibling families.
We’ve adopted this community (and it’s adopted us) as our forever home.
But everywhere we have lived together has become our home where we “grew where we were planted.”
We have come to realize that the mindset of making a home and doing our best to serve our community wherever we are is one of the keys to our resilience.
The other is understanding the fact that “together” the two of us are always home.
Family. Life has taught us that our family is just the two of us and then expands to include our offspring, blood relatives, and our “life” family members.
In 2024 our family will celebrate our being a home and together for 45 years.
We both will also celebrate continuing to learn from our ancestral family trees despite being displaced from most of them individually by generations.
We’re validating our research as musicians and artists again by releasing the recording of our newest album inspired by family on the date of our anniversary too.
If you’re reading this and made it to the end, you are likely “family.” Thank you for growing with us.
(ARTICLE) MUSINGS IN Cb: “She’s my family.”
PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area.
Featured artists on this album are Roger Wilder on piano; Gerald Spaits on bass; Morgan Rogers on drums with special musical guests Terri Anderson Burnett and Freda Proctor on flutes; WM Thornton on tenor saxophone; Greg Carroll on vibraphone; Will Matthews on guitar. LINER NOTES are finished for the album we’re recording in December at BRC Audio Productions in Kansas City. We’ll add the individual track duration times during postproduction. Avalon Video Services from Lawrence is also documenting this project.
RECORDING DAY 1
ALWAYS
INFINITY
LATER
CbQ PERSONNEL
C. Burnett, alto saxophone; R. Wilder, piano; G. Spaits, bass; M. Rogers, drums
ENGINEER AND PRODUCER
William Crain, BRC Audio Productions
VIDEOGRAPHER AND DOCUMENTARIAN
Gordon Brown, Avalon Video Services
RECORDING DAY 2
FINALLY
MAYBE
CbQ PERSONNEL+:
C. Burnett, alto saxophone; R. Wilder, piano; G. Spaits, bass; M. Rogers, drums with Terri Anderson Burnett and Freda Proctor, flutes; Greg Carroll, vibraphone
ENGINEER AND PRODUCER
William Crain, BRC Audio Productions
VIDEOGRAPHER AND DOCUMENTARIAN
Gordon Brown, Avalon Video Services
YESTERYEARS
CbQ PERSONNEL+:
C. Burnett, alto saxophone; R. Wilder, piano; G. Spaits, bass; M. Rogers, drums with Willie Meyers Thornton, tenor saxophone; Will Matthews, guitar
ENGINEER AND PRODUCER
William Crain, BRC Audio Productions
VIDEOGRAPHER AND DOCUMENTARIAN
Gordon Brown, Avalon Video Services
ALBUM: “ORIGINALS” (ARC-3442) by Christopher Burnett (BMI)
The music will be released on the Artists Recording Collective + ARC Recording Label and available worldwide. I’m very excited about this work and all six pieces of music that make up “ORIGINALS.” Looking forward to sharing this music with you!
MUSIC DEMOS + SHEET MUSIC
PURCHASE THE SHEET MUSIC FROM SHEET MUSIC PLUS (HAL LEONARD)
MOCKUP AUDIO of Track 1 “FINALLY”
PURCHASE THE SHEET MUSIC FROM SHEET MUSIC PLUS (HAL LEONARD)
VIDEO CLIP of Track 2 “ALWAYS”
PURCHASE THE SHEET MUSIC FROM SHEET MUSIC PLUS (HAL LEONARD)
MOCKUP AUDIO of Track 3 “MAYBE”
PURCHASE THE SHEET MUSIC FROM SHEET MUSIC PLUS (HAL LEONARD)
VIDEO CLIP of Track 4 “INFINITY”
PURCHASE THE SHEET MUSIC FROM SHEET MUSIC PLUS (HAL LEONARD)
MOCKUP AUDIO of Track 5 “LATER”
PURCHASE THE SHEET MUSIC FROM SHEET MUSIC PLUS (HAL LEONARD)
MOCKUP AUDIO of Track 6 “YESTERYEARS”
REHEARSAL GALLERY
SHE’S MY FAMILY. TOGETHER, WE ARE HOME. (BURNETTFAMILYUS.ORG)
PHOTO GALLERY: Piano and Drums rehearsing with the Flutes
We have everything for our new album “ORIGINALS” (ARC-3442) set up in advance for distribution and the release date is set for our 45th anniversary, 03/23/2024
REFERENCES + MEDIA QUOTE
“Saxophonist, educator, and military band veteran Christopher L. Burnett is known for his warm and lyrical jazz sound. Following a 20-plus year military career, during which he taught and performed, Burnett embarked on fruitful university teaching, as well as a performance career. He continued to perform in his native Kansas, releasing albums like 2013’s Time Stamps, 2014’s Firebird, and 2021’s The Standards Vol. 1.”
— Matt Collar / AllMusic, TIVO (ALLMUSIC.COM)
THANKS TO THE FOLLOWING ENTITIES FOR YOUR PRODUCTS AND SERVICES
(ARTICLE) Musings In Cb: “WE ARE CONSTANTLY WORKS IN PROGRESS”
PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area.
Yes, I’m a country boy from Paola, Kansas but my country boy game is now admittedly pretty weak.
I left Paola to strike out on my own almost 50 years ago and have subsequently lived in a wide variety of large cities and small towns in the United States and also some countries in Europe over those decades.
I have lost my country boy edge.
You would think that I could still tell the difference between squirrel scat and that from a rat or mouse.
I thought we had a rat or field mouse visiting us at night. Even had our exterminator company leave a humane trap to catch and relocate whichever.
Not so. Mystery solved.
I just caught the culprit (a cute bushy tailed squirrel) on his noontime pooping rounds today.
I am having to clean up after this dude a couple times a week.
Thanks to my sister Dr. Mary Jane Burnett for a solution: “Purchase some Repel All and sprinkle it where the poop was and you won’t have that problem. I buy mine from Home Depot.”
She further suggested: “I mix the granules with my grass seed when I overseed to keep the birds from eating them.”
Besides being smarter than me, my sister has maintained her connection to such things from our childhood.
Our neighbor’s uncle Marwood Lindsey used to take all of us as kids out hiking in the woods and along the nearby Bull Creek. We learned about nature on all levels from him. It was cool.
(ARTICLE) Musings In Cb: “SQUIRREL 1 – ME 0”
PHOTO by Corinna Gray Photography (2023)
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan Area.
This is a photograph of my NATO ID card from when I served with the Commander In Chief Allied Forces Southern Europe (NATO) Band at Naples Italy. Since it lived in my wallet and inside my pocket, this ID card was actually pristine when I finished that tour of duty in 1992, as well as when I concluded my entire 22-year active duty military career in 1996.
“Time Stamps” by Christopher Burnett (BMI)
The reason it became so tattered is that I gave it to our son, Micah to carry with him when he was deployed and served in combat. He carried it with him the entire time. In 2003, Micah deployed to Iraq with the 173rd Airborne Brigade. He received the Bronze Star Medal with Valor device for his exemplary heroic combat service. Yes, he was in the real stuff.
The Second Battle of Fallujah—code-named Operation Al-Fajr (Arabic: الفجر “the dawn”) and Operation Phantom Fury—was a joint American, the Iraqi government, and British offensive in November and December 2004, considered the highest point of conflict in Fallujah during the Iraq War. It was led by the U.S. Marines and U.S. Army against the Iraqi insurgents in the city of Fallujah and was authorized by the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Interim Government. The U.S. military called it “some of the heaviest urban combat U.S. Marines and Soldiers have been involved in since the Battle of Huế City in Vietnam in 1968.”
Micah brought my NATO ID card back home to me as he promised he would. After his time in service, he went back to college, finished a double major, and even initially served in a job that provided services and resources that helped vets. They told me that he was a superstar in that work and enjoyed helping other veterans transition back to the civilian society after serving.
I was a musician in the band my entire career and never came close to combat duty. My son is a true war hero. I love him very much and I’m very proud to be his father. We have lots to be thankful for as a family. All four of us are military veterans, our son is a combat hero and our daughter was the very first commissioned officer in the history of our entire family. That’s cool. We are grateful. SALUTE! 🇺🇸
Christopher and Terri (Anderson) Burnett established their branch of The Burnett Family in March of 1979 in Copenhagen, Denmark. They are professional musicians, educators, and entrepreneurs based in the Kansas City Metropolitan area.
